The Featherstonehaughs are a London-based, all-male contemporary dance company, described by Arts Council England as "one of the leading contemporary dance companies in Britain," presenting work that "is diverse, witty and instantly recognisable." [1]
The Featherstonehaughs company was formed by Lea Anderson (now Artistic Director/Choreographer) in 1988, complementing The Cholmondeleys, an all-female company formed four years earlier. [2]
Works created by Anderson for The Featherstonehaughs include:
One of the founding members of the Featherstonehaughs (1990–1997) is movement director Dan O'Neill who has worked extensively in opera at the Royal Opera House [3] and the Grange Opera among others. He has worked in film (The Girl with All The Gifts, 2016), and on the first three series of Humans, a Kudos/AMC production (2015, 2016, 2018) designing the movement of the robots.
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is a historic opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. The first theatre on the site, the Theatre Royal (1732), served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, the first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there.
Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) is one of the five major ballet companies of the United Kingdom, alongside The Royal Ballet, the English National Ballet, Northern Ballet and Scottish Ballet. Founded as the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet, the company was established in 1946 as a sister company to the earlier Sadler's Wells company, which moved to the Royal Opera House that same year, subsequently becoming known as The Royal Ballet.
Karole Armitage is an American dancer and choreographer currently based in New York City. She is artistic director of Armitage Gone! Dance, a contemporary dance company that performs several times annually in New York City as well as touring internationally. She was dubbed the “punk ballerina” in the 1980s. She earned a Tony nomination for her choreography of the Broadway musical Hair.
The Royal Ballet is a British internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, England. The largest of the five major ballet companies in Great Britain, the Royal Ballet was founded in 1931 by Dame Ninette de Valois. It became the resident ballet company of the Royal Opera House in 1946, and has purpose-built facilities within these premises. It was granted a royal charter in 1956, becoming recognised as Britain's flagship ballet company.
Riverside Studios is an arts centre on the north bank of the River Thames in Hammersmith, London, England. The venue plays host to contemporary performance, film, visual art exhibitions and television production.
The Gateway Theatre was a small producing and receiving theatre in the city of Chester, England, which opened in 1969 and closed in 2007.
Mats Ek is a Swedish dance and ballet choreographer, dancer and stage director. He was the manager of the Cullberg Ballet from 1985 to 1993.
Lea Anderson MBE is a British choreographer and artistic director. She co-founded The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs dance companies with Teresa Barker and Gaynor Coward, at which she has choreographed over 100 works.
Susan Marshall is an American choreographer and the Artistic Director of Susan Marshall & Company. She has held the position of Director of the Program in Dance at Princeton University since 2009.
The Prix de Lausanne is an international dance competition held annually in Lausanne, Switzerland. The competition is for young dancers seeking to pursue a professional career in classical ballet, and many former prize winners of the competition are now leading stars with major ballet companies around the world. The competition is managed by a non-profit foundation organised by the Fondation en faveur de l'Art chorégraphique and is maintained by various sponsors, patrons and donors.
Ralph Lemon is an American choreographer, company director, writer, visual artist and a conceptualist. Raised in a religious environment, he developed his artistic creativity as a child. Early in his career, Lemon used painting as a source of expression, and as he discovered dance, utilized movement as a physical means of expression.
Janet Karin OAM was born in Perth, Australia in 1938. She became one of Australia's leading dancers in 1956, and has danced with the Victorian Ballet Guild, Borovansky Ballet, and was a founding member of The Australian Ballet. She is a Nationally and Internationally recognised dance educator, and is currently the Head of Artistic Studies and Kinetic Educator for the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne, Australia.
BodyVox is a dance company based in Portland, Oregon, United States, and was formed in 1997 on commission from the Portland Opera. The company blends contemporary dance with dance theater, and often makes use of other performance art form such as live music. In addition to their performances, the company has worked extensively with film and multi-media. BodyVox's collection of short films "Modern Daydreams" was a collaboration with performance artist and film maker Mitchell Rose, and the film won the American Choreography Award for Outstanding Achievement in Short Film in 2002.
Crystal Pite is a Canadian choreographer and dancer. She began her professional dance career in 1988 at Ballet BC, and in 1996 she joined Ballett Frankfurt under the tutelage of William Forsythe. After leaving Ballett Frankfurt she became the resident choreographer of Montreal company Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal from 2001 to 2004. She then returned to Vancouver where she focused on choreographing while continuing to dance in her own pieces until 2010. In 2002 she formed her own company called Kidd Pivot, which produced her original works Uncollected Work (2003), Double Story (2004), Lost Action (2006), Dark Matters (2009), The You Show (2010), The Tempest Replica (2011), Betroffenheit (2015), and Revisor (2019) to date. Throughout her career she has been commissioned by many international dance companies to create new pieces, including The Second Person (2007) for Netherlands Dans Theater and Emergence (2009) for the National Ballet of Canada, the latter of which was awarded four Dora Mavor Moore Awards.
Ivo van Hove is a Belgian theatre director known as the artistic director of Toneelgroep Amsterdam in the Netherlands and for his Off-Broadway avant-garde experimental theatre productions. On Broadway, he has directed revival productions of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, and The Crucible, Lee Hall's Network in 2018, and Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story in 2020. Among his numerous awards he has received a Tony Award and a Laurence Olivier Award for A View from the Bridge. He was made a Knight of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 2004, and a Commander in the Order of the Crown in 2016.
The Cholmondeleys were a London-based, all-female contemporary dance company, described by Arts Council England as "one of the leading contemporary dance companies in Britain," presenting work that "is diverse, witty and instantly recognisable." Formed in 1984, the company was disbanded in 2011.
Danses concertantes is the title of a work for chamber orchestra written in 1941–42 by Igor Stravinsky, commissioned by Werner Janssen. Stravinsky's music has been used for eponymous ballets by numerous choreographers attracted by its danceability.
Featherstonhaugh is an English surname. The name comes from Featherstonhaugh in Northumberland, from the Old English feðere, 'feather', stān, 'stone', and healh, 'corner'.
Mark Lorimer is a British dancer and choreographer, best known for his work with the Brussels-based choreographers Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Thomas Hauert.
Lea Elizabeth Ved is an American contemporary dancer and choreographer. She was a second soloist contemporary dancer at the Royal Swedish Ballet, dancing with the company from 2016 until 2018. Ved currently dances with Nederlands Dans Theater.